


Item #23: bake and eat a cake without using your hands

by Menatiera



Series: Avengers do GISHWHES [2]
Category: Gishwhes - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers do GISHWHES, Banter, Crack, Fluff and Crack, GISHWHES, Gen, Grocery Shopping, Tony Is a Good Bro, bucky is a great baker, but not necessarily with his face, cake baking, clint eats anything, clint eats even the things he doesn't like at all, especially if buck baked them, grossness in the kitchen, item 23, natasha is only mildly impressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 23:00:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20299342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Menatiera/pseuds/Menatiera
Summary: GISHWHES Item #23: bake and eat a cake without using your hands. The original task description is way longer, of course, but this is the gist of it. Bucky volunteers as a tribute, and Clint is ready to eat anything.Bingo fills:TSB A5 - Doing groceries togetherBBB U1 - [image: manbun SebStan profile]





	Item #23: bake and eat a cake without using your hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cpt_winniethepooh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cpt_winniethepooh/gifts).

> Still gifted to Winnie, who is a terrible enabler, a wonderful beta, and an all-around great friend.

“I’m doing this,” Bucky calls dibs almost immediately while still scanning through the task list on his tablet.

Steve, who knows Bucky and his reading speed by heart, looks to the bottom of the first page of his printed papers. “Twenty-three?” he asks for clarification.

Bucky nods, and Steve nods too and puts a tiny X under Bucky’s name to the number on his enormous spreadsheet. “Duly noted.”

Clint, who hasn’t stopped grinning in the last twenty-six hours (Natasha swears he was smiling even in his sleep) and can’t sit still for two seconds, lets out a loud guffaw. “I’m going to film it.”

Tony crosses his arms. “You’re also going to eat it.” Bucky is the unofficial baker of the Tower, always heading to the kitchen when he needs his mental balance back after some unsettling events, and he was good to begin with, but this much of practice made him excellent. Bucky’s cupcakes are among the great miracles of the Avengers domestic life. Usually, at least. “I’d be the first to line up for a Buckaroo cake normally, but nope, I won’t touch this.” 

The others hastily agree, but it doesn’t break down Clint’s good mood.

*

“First I have to go to grocery shopping,” Bucky says, and grabs Tony’s forearm. “You, you’re coming with me.”

“Why me?”

”Because Pepper is not here, and you two have good and expensive taste, as opposed to most of these heathens I’m surrounded with, and I like to spend your money,” Bucky explains.

“Who says you won’t pay for it?”

“Oh please, tin can. You are physically unable to let others pay for things in your presence, and I’m for once taking advantage of it.”

“Fine,” Tony grumbles, “but I’m driving and we’re not riding your bike, it ruins my hair.”

“Deal.”

*

“So I’m thinking about a polka-dot strawberry cake,” Bucky announces while entering the supermarket. They both wear hoodies and sunglasses, plus Bucky has the synthetic sleeve over his metal arm, but otherwise neither of them put much effort into disguise. Scott laughed his ass off when he first heard that all the Avengers went with this universal method while out in public. But hey, if it looks stupid and works, it ain’t that stupid, right?

Tony stares blankly at Bucky over the edge of the tinted glass. “…Why.”

“Because I like strawberry but it’s among the few things Clint can’t stand,” Bucky says cheerfully, the little shit. Tony can approve of that.

“But why the polka dots? Those are so fifties.”

Bucky shrugs. “I’m a fossil anyway. And for the challenge, of course. Now, where do you think is the liquid food coloring?”

It’s mostly Bucky who leads the way through the store, because apparently while Tony has opinions about every item and doesn’t simply go for the most expensive brands, he has absolutely no idea of the layout of any physical store. Bucky suspects neither of them have been in a supermarket for a long long time.

But they manage to collect everything necessary for the cake - and a few other stuff, they just couldn’t leave the Avengers-themed ziplocked snack bags nor the socks with tiny Thor capes attached to them, and neither the toy shield to function as a cake plate later, okay, they have  _ kids _ \- at least. And Tony, of course, pays for it. Bucky smirks, but lets Tony drive again, which he never allows to Steve (because Steve is a  _ terrible _ domestic driver), so he considers it a fair deal.

*

“So this is GISHWHES, Team Avengers, and Bucky Barnes will attempt to make Item 23, which is to bake a cake, but without using his hands or any measuring methods other than his mouth,” Clint announces to the camera.

“Why do you even do that, it’s a maximum of 20 seconds video, we won’t have time for your shit in it,” Bucky points out.

“For me to be able to know what’s going on when I’m old and senile and rewatch this video.”

“You’re already old and senile.”

“Look who’s talking, Mr. Centenarian.”

“And I still look younger than you,” Bucky grins, and it may be true, but he probably shouldn’t be this smug about it. Except it feels phenomenal to be, so he puts a lid on it, does his hair up to a messy bun and gets to work.

*

“My mouth is…” he takes a mouthful of water and spits it to a measuring cup, “about half of this.” He nods to himself, recounting all amounts in his head already. He’s a sniper, he’s good with simple math.

“Oh Granny, what big mouth you have!” Clint says, and in revenge Bucky splashes the water with a swift motion in his general direction. “Oy! Not the camera!” 

“It’s Stark Tech, it’s waterproof.”

“Yeah, but I need the lenses clean to immortalize you facepalming into the batter for the future generations in HD.”

*

Bucky does facepalms into the mixing bowl as gracefully as one would expect. Winter Soldier or not, trained assassin or not, ghost or not - there is no way to do that with dignity. He emerges spitting and heaving, with the lower half of his face covered with half-mixed dough. He looks on the reflective surface of the oven door, and shrugs. “Still better than a Hydra muzzle, I guess.”

But before that, he had to recount the ingredients, sometimes not even once, because Clint laughed so much his hands shook and ruined the recording.

“Stop it,” Bucky grumbles after he breaks up the fourth egg with his teeth, and then fishes out a piece of eggshell from the mix with his tongue.

“This is so disgusting,” Clint wheezes, “I can’t, I can’t. I’m going to eat a cake full of your saliva. You’re literally licking the ingredients. Imagine how jealous your fans will be of me. It’s almost like kissing you.” He can’t seem to stop laughing.

“I’m going to ban you from my kitchen and ask someone else if you don’t do your job,” Bucky threatens.

*

“You’ve sliced the strawberries beforehand, isn’t that cheating,” Clint challenges, and Bucky shots him a murder glare. “Oh, do that again,” Clint pipes up, “it’ll look amazing in the video.”

Bucky turns away. “How am I supposed to slice strawberries otherwise, develop a tongue with a sharp edge or what?”

“Excellent idea.”

“Fuck you.”

Just to spite him, Bucky gets one of his combat knives in his mouth and slices strawberries without using his hands.

“I’m going to post this part on youtube separately,” Clint muses with tears in his eyes, “this is some next level anime shit right here.”

*

Operating a blender with one’s mouth is a surprisingly messy procedure. 

“Please don’t let any cleaning staff enter this area before we’re done,” Bucky sighs, eyeing the batter on the ceiling, dripping ever so slowly into Bucky’s hair.

He’ll need to use the smaller pan than he planned. At least he’s going to have enough icing to experiment with the best method of mouthfully applying it.

*

In the end, Bucky has two different mixtures, a normal and a pink-colored one, plus the filling, and is faced with the challenge to spoon the pink one into small dots to freeze. Bucky blinks a few times. “I guess even you won’t eat this if I format it in my mouth,” he concludes. There are limits to everyone’s grossness-tolerance - though Clint admittedly eats pizza he founds in trash he lands in, so it’s hard to say where  _ his _ limits are.

“What, you mean you can’t operate two spoons separately with your mouth? I’m disappointed in the Winter Soldier’s skills.”

Bucky glares again. “I wish I was allowed to kill you,” he grumbles, sighs again, and slumps his shoulders in defeat. “Okay,  _ fine, _ it won’t be polka dots.” And he adds way more quietly, “that’s so fifties after all anyways.”

*

Turns out the the filling and icing isn’t that hard, as long as Bucky is careful to stop whenever he feels his nose threatening to run. Saliva is one thing, but he definitely  _ doesn’t _ want snot in his cake. What was hard, even to him who has Winter Soldier level of knife skills, was to cut the cake to three even layers while holding the knife in his mouth and his hands behind his back to avoid accidental touches.

But hey, everything for a successful gish item, right?

Clint, the little shit, speaks up only after Bucky is leaning back and watching his creation ready to go into the oven, his face covered with icing from chin to forehead. “You know, I’m fairly sure it would’ve been allowed to use a spatula if you held it in your mouth like you did with the knife, which would have spared you from doing this all with your nose.”

Because of course the best time to share his insight is after the fact. Bucky grabs and throws said spatula to him and Clint isn’t quick enough to avoid it fully, but at least it only hits him on his shoulder instead of the dead center of his head.

Then Bucky spits sprinkles and edible glitter in his creation for good measure, and starts to put the remaining strawberries on top with his mouth, forming a big A with them.

*

They invite Nat over to film the eating because Clint has to be in those shots, and she holds the camera up rather uninterested but steadily as Bucky tilts the original plate and carefully slides his creation onto the toy Cap shield without his hands.

“Wow,” Natasha murmurs to the recording, “this actually doesn’t look half bad.” 

Bucky smiles at her, and his expression gets that softer tone as usual when it’s directed to his little spider. Their bond is something special and complicated they have no definition for. Bucky secretly hopes that the camera will catch it for him to examine later from an outsider perspective.

“Wanna try it?” he offers, and Nat chuckles.

“Sadly I know how it was made so no, thanks.”

It doesn’t really matter, though, because behind Bucky’s back, Clint simply jumps at the cake and bites a big chunk out of it. He munches on it open-mouthed and grins to the camera, icing smeared on both corners of his mouth. “ ‘s disgusting,” he announces with a grin stretching from ear to ear.

Bucky barely glances back. “You mean it’s delicious. After all,  _ I _ made it.”

*

Tony laughs his ass off while editing the mess of recording into their 19-seconds long item video, and Bucky gets a thank you card with cry-laughing emojis on it from Pepper later.

**Author's Note:**

> If this fic made you smile, please consider leaving a kudos and/or comment, this author needs validation! :)


End file.
